Along with a few personal comments, Lukas Smith has posted some thoughts about the state of everything PEAR following his stepping down from working as an active developer on the project.

I guess with me and Pierre leaving it did spawn a lot of energy about how to organize PEAR in the future. I am still participating in this discussion to some extent, mainly functioning as the historian who can explain why things are the way they are etc in order to prevent people from making rash decisions or even worse repeating old mistakes.

He also comments on the state of package submissions to PEAR, noting that some of them are just unrealistic and that it might be better to start a "PEAR2" side to allow for some of these more expanded ideas to flourish.

Instead I think each of the categories should manage itself more. So packages approval would be handled within the category. The same for QA'ing etc. This way new developers would not be facing this gigantic community. I think this is simply overwhelming. Even for old developers it becomes impossible to feel "at home" in a project of the size of PEAR.